By Joe Rector

Uh oh! The New Year is here, and it’s time for folks to make their resolutions. Most of them will be followed diligently, at least for the first 30 days. After that, we’ll settle back into our ruts and forget about changes to our ways of life. For several years, I’ve forgone making any resolution, but this year, I’m going to make a few promises to myself.

As of the first of the year 2018, I’m going to work on reshaping my body. Yes, I know that I’m 65 and that gravity and atrophy have taken their tolls. Still, I need to make a few changes.

As soon as Medicare kicked in, I joined the YMCA and began working out. The amount of weight I lift isn’t that much, but already I can see a difference in my strength and endurance. Three times a week I go through 14 different exercises and complete two sets of 15 reps. Some days, the workout is easy; on other days, I struggle to finish and drag myself to the car for the drive home.

Some folks simply love working out. They wear smiles and perform their workouts with gusto. It’s not that I don’t like to take part in physical exercise. No, I just don’t enjoy pushing dead weight over my head or out from my chest, curling it up with my arms, or maneuvering it with my legs. Still, the results are good for me. My arms and legs are more toned, and my core is strengthened.

The second part of my resolution deals with my weight. As much as I don’t like working out, I hate dieting even worse. It’s not so much that dieting is so difficult with the programs that are available today. No, the problem for me comes in that I’m being told that I cannot have some things included in my food intake, otherwise known as junk food. I admit freely that I love sweets and salami and Vienna Sausages, and bacon. Those things aren’t found on any diet as being all right for consumption. As soon as I’m told I can’t have something, I crave it.

The second part of the problem with this resolution is my lack of commitment to it. Like most folks, I want to lose weight, but I don’t want to have to work at it too much. I’d rather just say I’m going to lose weight and then let it disappear. My life is already filled with enough things to do: getting out of bed, going to work, taking out the trash, and vacuuming and dusting the house. Another “to do” item is just adding stress to my existence.

Perhaps the worst part of this vow to lose weight is follow through. Okay, I work at shedding some pounds and the bulging belly that comes with it, and before long, I have success doing so. The real kick in the behind is that I have to maintain this eating regimen or the weight reappears. It seems fairer that once a person loses weight that he doesn’t need to worry anymore about it returning.

I am not looking forward to the first of the year because I know what awaits me. In fact, the more I think about the whole thing, the less sure I am that this dieting thing is going to happen. I might look for a substitute to it, maybe by swimming laps at the Y or returning to DDP Yoga, the best workout I’ve ever used to get in shape. If I do take on this diet, try to understand any hateful comments that I might make for the next couple of months. My chewing people out is just a part of a new diet.